Free Ship of Gold in the Deep Blue Sea by Gary Kinder

but still I felt that we were in his hands and resigned to his will. All that fearful night we watched and prayed, not knowing but that every hour might be the last. My dear husband and I talked calmly of our dear, dear friends, of our brief happiness together, and hopes in the future. Life had never seemed so attractive or dear to either of us, yet I think we could both say ‘thy will be done.’ We resolved that when the moment came we would tie ourselves together and the same wave would engulf us both.”
    About eleven o’clock that night, Addie remembered the bottles of wine and the crackers and biscuits and other foodstuffs she and Ansel had received as wedding presents. The hampers filled with these items were still in their stateroom. She made her way across the cabin and down to her stateroom and brought up all of the hampers filled with the packages of food and began passing them out to the exhausted men. The men stopped only for a few minutes to sit down, eat, and drink, and then began bailing again. At intervals throughout the night, Addie made the rounds with her hampers of food and wine, until the men had consumed it all.
    â€œMrs. Easton,” recalled Joseph Bassford, “furnished the men a large number of bottles of wine. The liberal bestowal of the wine, andthe spirit which prompted its donation, won the admiration of all. Not only was increased vigor given to the men, but it roused them to work still bravely on.”
    All Friday night, hurricane winds ripped across the steamer’s decks, the storm waters crackling with phosphorescence, and every hour the water in her hold rose another six inches. But the bailing never stopped. Hand to hand to hand, the water-filled buckets passed up the gangways, out of steerage, out of the engine room, out of the second cabin, the empty buckets traveling down again to be refilled. Too exhausted to be heard above the shrillness of the wind, and perhaps too fearful to speak, the men worked on in silence as the ship tossed in a dark and relentless sea. From midnight till four on Saturday morning, they grew wearier and wearier from incessant labor and exposure to the storm, and the water gained fast. Yet they continued, and now the women offered encouragement by repeating, “Only another hour to sunrise.”
    â€œOh that long weary night!” wrote Addie. “How I counted the moments as they slowly dragged along! And as morning came, about three o’clock the Captain came in and said if they could keep up the ship about three or four hours longer, he thought we might be saved. The storm might cease and then perhaps they might get up steam, or when daylight came a vessel in sight might give us the blessed means of rescue. So they toiled on, and never was a daylight more gratefully welcomed than on that Saturday morning—the last that ever dawned on many a noble heart.”

ABOARD THE SS CENTRAL AMERICA
    S ATURDAY M ORNING , S EPTEMBER 12, 1857
    T HROUGHOUT THE SHIP , the coming of dawn fired the men’s spirits. They could see through the rain to the haze hanging along the horizon, the sea not cresting as high as before and the clouds beginning to thin. The wind had shifted and dropped, now blowing in at about forty knots from the west and southwest, though higher-velocity squalls within the storm still spun through to rock the ship. Captain Herndon pointed to the thinning clouds and predicted that their breaking up portended an end to the storm. He spoke to the men at the pumps; he cheered the men in the bailing lines. He told them he thought the storm was abating, and that if they would just continue to bail until noon, the steamer might be saved. He delivered the same message to the passengers in the main cabin: They must not abandon hope.
    â€œThis announcement caused a general cheer from the men at the pumps,” said Judge Monson, “and sent joy and gladness to the hearts of the lady